Saturday, May 7, 2016

Russia’s Lack of Property Rights Will Lead to Slow Disintegration of the Country, Pavlova Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, May 7 – US-based Russian
historian Irina Pavlova quotes with approval a Russian blogger who observes
that “the Chekists have finally finished off Mother Russia. There will not be
any revolutions, bloody risings and terrible social crises. [Instead,] Russia
will slowly and over decades sink into a swamp until it finally falls apart.”

“The first cause” of this, the
anonymous Russian blogger continues, again with Pavlova’s approval, is the lack
of an established system of private property “as the main ‘buckle’ of the
entire Russian state” and consequently the lack of the most important
foundation stone of a legal and democratic state (ivpavlova.blogspot.com/2016/05/blog-post.html#more).

Russia has undergone “privatization”
but it has not set up a system which defends the rights of property, Pavlova
points out, and “world history does not know any other path for the establishment
of democratic procedures and institutions (including honest courts) besides the
assertion of the right of private property.”

First of all, those who own property
have sought to secure their right to dispose of it during their lifetimes as
they see fit and then to leave it to their heirs in their own country, she
continues. Only then do “a normal parliament, normal parties, a normal court
and other democratic institutions” emerge for “the defense of their interests.”

In the West as it emerged from
feudalism, it was “the owners of private property [who] became the foundation of
a legal state. It was they [who] secured the formation of an agreement between
society and the state … and from this agreement the entire society won because
it became the basis of the observing of rights and ensured the formation of
legal consciousness.”

As Pavlova suggests, “in Russia, not
a single social force up to now has even attempted to raise the principled
question about the review of the results of the privatization of the beginning
of the 1990s and the establishment of honest rules of the game.” No real
liberal party has emerged to “defend private entrepreneurs and defend their
interests.”

Moreover, she continues, “no one has
come out into the streets to demand the separation of property from the powers
that me, no one has demanded the defense of private property and the definition
of the continues of its transfer by inheritance [and] no one has demanded the
review of the criminal cases and the liberation of thousands of entrepreneurs
who are serving time for economic crimes.”

“People should not
be idealists,” Pavlova suggests. “People cannot change only because they
suddenly decide to become good, honest and incorruptible or because they are
forced by administrative measures to become such.Corruption will never disappear in this way;
instead, it will inevitably find ways to hide itself or do end runs around the
rules.”

“And elections in such
circumstances,” she concludes, “cannot be honest or parties real parties; and “and
as a result, the [Russian] parliament will remain a pseudo-parliament.”